1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention relate to a hard disk drive (HDD) carrier converter apparatus and, more particularly, to a HDD carrier converter apparatus in which 2.5″ and 3.5″ HDDs cohabitate.
2. Description of the Background
Currently, hard disk drive (HDD) technology is moving from 3.5″ standard sized drives (3.5″ HDDs) to 2.5″ standard sized drives (2.5″ HDDs). As such, since there are a significant number of machines in the field that have bays that are designed to receive 3.5″ HDDs, it is useful to be able to plug the 2.5″ HDDs into bays of those already operating machines.
The process of plugging 2.5″ HDDs into bays designed for 3.5″ HDDs presents certain problems. Among these is the need to maintain a substantially uniform airflow through each of the bays of a single machine. However, since 2.5″ HDDs have different profiles from 3.5″ HDDs, a machine having bays into which both types of HDDs are plugged will tend to produce a non-uniform airflow. In this case, some of the HDDs may not be properly cooled and, consequently, may not operate properly.